The Nyongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center (녕변원자력연구소) is North Korea's major nuclear facility, operating its first nuclear reactors. It is located in Nyongbyon County in North Pyongan Province, about 100 km north of Pyongyang. The center produced the fissile material for North Korea's six nuclear weapon tests from 2006 to 2017, and since 2009 is developing indigenous light water reactor nuclear power station technology.
Facilities The major installations include all aspects of a Magnox nuclear reactor fuel cycle, based on the use of natural uranium fuel:
a fuel fabrication plant, a 5 MWe experimental reactor producing power and district heating, a short-term spent fuel storage facility, a fuel reprocessing facility that recovers uranium and plutonium from spent fuel using the PUREX process. Magnox spent fuel is not designed for long-term storage as both the casing and uranium metal core react with water; it is designed to be reprocessed within a few years of removal from a reactor. As a carbon dioxide cooled, graphite moderated Magnox reactor does not require difficult-to-produce enriched uranium fuel or a heavy water moderator it is an attractive choice for a wholly indigenous nuclear reactor development. The Magnox facilities were disabled in 2007 in accord with the six-party talks agreement, but following the breakdown of that agreement were partially re-enabled in 2009 to reprocess existing stocks of spent fuel. On 15 September 2015, North Korea announced that the reactor had resumed operation. The center also has an IRT-2000 pool-type research reactor, supplied by the Soviet Union in 1963, operational since 1965. The reactor fuel is IRT-2M type assemblies of 10%, 36% and 80% enriched uranium. As the center has not received fresh fuel since Soviet times, this reactor is now (February 2007) only run occasionally for experiments or to produce isotopes, particularly iodine-131 for thyroid cancer radiation therapy. In 2009, the building of a small indigenous experimental light water reactor began, with trial operations starting in 2023. In 2010, a uranium enrichment plant began operating. The Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center site occupies 24.8 square kilometres (9.6 sq mi). It has two sections, the nuclear research section and a larger residential district (sometimes named Bungang or Pun’gangni), separated and surrounded by fencing.
History
Construction of the 5 MWe experimental reactor began in 1980, and the reactor first went critical in 1986. This reactor was an initial small technology proving reactor for a following development program of larger Magnox reactors. The spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility appeared to still be under construction in 1992. The 5 MWe experimental reactor operated intermittently until 1994 when it was shut down in accordance with the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. Following the breakdown of the Agreed Framework in 2002, operation restarted in February 2003, creating plutonium within its fuel load at a rate of about 6 kilograms (13 lb) per year. The reactor fuel was replaced between April and June 2005. The spent nuclear fuel has been reprocessed with an estimated yield of about 24 to 42 kilograms (53 to 93 lb) of plutonium metal, some of which was used for the nuclear weapons involved in the 2006 and 2009 North Korean nuclear tests. Nyongbyon is also the site of a 50 MWe Magnox prototype power reactor, but construction was halted in 1994 about a year from completion in accord with the Agreed Framework, and by 2004 the structures and pipework had deteriorated badly. This construction was being dismantled in 2010. Another 200 MWe Magnox full-scale power reactor was being constructed at Taechon, 20 km north-west of Nyongbyon, (39.928°N 125.569°E / 39.928; 125.569) until construction was also halted in 1994 in accord with the Agreed Framework. By 2005 reconstruction of this reactor was uneconomic. The reactor designs were based on declassified information about the British Magnox design at Calder Hall and elsewhere, and the spent fuel reprocessing plant on the multi-national European Company for the Chemical Processing of Irradiated Fuels (EUROCHEMIC) plant at Mol-Dessel in Belgium.
2007 shutdown
On 13 February 2007, an agreement was reached at the Six party talks that North Korea will shut down and seal the Magnox nuclear reactor and associated facilities and invite back International Atomic Energy Agency personnel to conduct all necessary monitoring and verifications. In return for this North Korea will receive emergency energy assistance from the other five parties in the form of 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors arrived at the site on 28 June to discuss verification and monitoring arrangements for the shutdown. This had been delayed from April due to a dispute with the United States over Banco Delta Asia. On 3 June an anonymous South Korean government official indicated that the shutdown may start following the first oil shipment later in the month. On 14 July, Sean McCormack stated that North Korea had told the US that the reactor had been shut down. He added that the US welcomed the news, and was awaiting verification from the IAEA team. The next day, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei announced the UN's confirmation that the reactor had been shut down. On 18 July 2007, the IAEA confirmed that all five nuclear facilities at Nyongbyon had been shut down. In his Introductory Statement to the IAEA Board of Governors on 2008-03-03, the Director General stated that he could not provide an update on the disabling of the facilities, as it was not undertaken by the IAEA. All fuel rods from the 5 MWe Experimental Nuclear Power Plant and nuclear material generated by the disabling of the Nuclear Fuel Fabrication Plant were under IAEA containment and surveillance.
2008 cooling tower demolition On 27 June 2008 North Korea destroyed the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons program – the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor in the complex. The implosion was witnessed by a number of international journalists and diplomats. The demolition of the 60-foot (18 m)-tall cooling tower, which carried off waste heat to the atmosphere, is a response to U.S. concessions after the North delivered a declaration of its nuclear programs to be dismantled. The United States paid the US$2.5 million demolition fee.
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